2. Sit at my desk long enough, the Times' Susan Thurston says, and you'll find out people are desperate for work, even for $11 an hour in a warehouse.

3. Patty Ryan on a guy and his gang in rural Valrico: Martin Howard Winters, 55, and the River Otter Preppers "are preparing for an end-of-times event as prophesied by the Book of Revelations in the Bible which he believes will occur in the near future," the affidavit states, "which will require individuals to rely on themselves for food and protection from other individuals and the federal government."

Last October, Winters told an FBI undercover employee that he had spent $200,000 on his preparations and that he had buried 60 AR-15 firearms in four barrels in the ground, the record states. They toured the neighborhood, and Winters pointed out bunkers that he keeps on three east Hillsborough County properties, two on Williams Boulevard and one on Spring Road.

He talked about shooting government agents in the back, first snagging them with fishhooks that would pop out of air-pressured pipes mounted on the eaves of porches. "Winters will then shoot the agents while they are entangled in the hooks," Special Agent Ronald Monaco wrote in the affidavit.

4. Florida's not a good place to be a pedestrian. This isn't new to anybody who knows Ben Montgomery. But Orlando's the worst. "Unlike so many metropolitan centers, by virtue of our rural history, Central Florida was not originally designed as a walkable community," Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs told the Orlando Sentinel. "Only 1 percent of our residents commute to work by foot — less than any other metro area in the country."

6. "Every social ill of the last 50 years has come home to roost in Tymber Skan," said Robert Spivey, Orange County's code-enforcement chief. Hurricanes. Crime. The Great Recession. Chronic unemployment. They all combined to wreak havoc on the Orange County condominium community that today is littered with broken and boarded-up windows, bashed-in doors and other units that have become playpens for vandals.

About the blog

For the past year, readers have come to the State You're In pages in our monthly Floridian magazine to feast on our facts, to lap up our lyrics, to tarry with our Time Capsule. And then they were done, and there was nothing to do but wait for the next month. Didn't seem right that we were apart for so long. So we on the SYI desk have decided to go digital. Written by Michael Kruse, it will provide you a constant supply of signature State You're In news and commentary. Because we were meant to be together. Every day.